Im a British ExPat living in San Francisco, California. Moved here in November 2009 with my husband Dave and our two westies Jess and Bluey.
Joined Weight Watchers online in Jan 2012, follow my progress here on my blog.

I think Ive finally found the right way to use all of my points :) Eating all of my weekly points and a few of my exercise points works for me. I did start last week by eating 104 points on Wednesday - yes I did say 104, but then the rest of the week I kept to around my daily allowance and ended up earning 62 activity points and only using 16 of them. Plus last week my daily allowance went down by 1 too. So I think as long as you average out over the week it's all good.

The final result was a loss of 3.4lbs, so I am now in the 270's, I also got my 5% award today too. Taking my total loss to 14.6lbs. My next goal on the Weight Watchers site is 10% which is 263lbs.

Ive found 8 people who want to take part in the 5k San Francisco Color Run with me in July, so have that to look forward to. My exercise this week has consisted of walking the dog, water running, exercise bike, and power walking. I am so much faster walking without the dogs.

Nearly forgot, I measured myself this morning too, and in the last 7 weeks I have lost several inches from my body, and I'm noticing lots of my clothes are getting baggier.

Looking forward to another great week. A big thanks to all my twitter followers you are all fantastic and such an inspiration. I will get round to playing catchup later on today - promise :)

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

$1 bills, am I the only one who finds them annoying? I always think I have lots of money in my wallet, then I check and it's $1 bills, so I end up taking them out and putting them aside, and this is the end result! If only parking meters took $1 bills instead of quarters!

The final category for tomorrow is 'something you are listening to'.

For those of you wanting to take part in March's photo challenge here is the list, I'm not sure yet if I will be taking part - watch this space :)

So I went out to my local Ross store and found some cute glass jars for $3 each and then bought some colored glass stones online and the end result is

The jar on the left is the amount of pounds I would ideally like to lose - there was 140 in there to start with and the one on the right is the number of pounds I have lost so far. Total of 11 so far. I think it looks pretty and is a good reminder of how each little pound soon mounts up to a lot of pounds. I will of course be sharing up to date pics along the way as the jar on the right gets fuller.

My second motivation tool this week is a weight loss challenge on Twitter that is being hosted by @DaciaLee33 You can find details of the challenge on her recent blog post. The challenge officially started yesterday, but if you ask nicely I'm sure she may let you join if you sign up in the next day :) It's an 8 week challenge and the is based on the percentage of weight loss each week.. A big thank you to Dacia for hosting this awesome challenge. At present we have 30 participants. I have also offered to host another challenge after this 8 week one.

I'm also thinking about taking part in the Color Run in San Francisco on July 28. Just waiting for registration to open and ideally someone to run with. So if you are in San Francisco and would like to run with me - please let me know. Although I say run, it will be more of a fast walk. It's only 5k so not too far and it looks so much fun.

As usual Jess and Bluey were excited to see what delights were in the box for them.

This month's box had a Valentine theme to it being as it is the month of love. One thing we did miss this month, was there was no handwritten message on the inside of the box :(

The goodies we got this month were.

Acadia Antlers As the name suggests they are antlers sourced from moose in Maine. They are a natural, non-splitting rawhide alternative. There was only one in the box so I need to make sure I can entertain one dog whilst the other has a chew on it, and then let them swap. Normally Bluey tends to start chewing the harder treats and once they are 'broken in' Jess will finish them off. It doesn't have any nasty smell, so hopefully it will stay that way when they chew it.

Lollycadoodle We received a super cute pink heart 100% wool toy, Jess loves all toys like this and this is a big hit with her.

Yellow Dog Bakery I think this was the dog's favorite part of the box, but then anything edible normally is! They were super cute heart shaped organic treats for minty fresh breath.

ProDental I've seen a similar product in the store before but never purchased them. They are basically peppermint flavor dental wipes, both of my dogs are used to having their teeth brushed, so this will be a nice simple tool to use on them.

We also liked the cute yellow collar that shows us as BarkBox customers.

Lost 1.6lbs taking my total to 11.2lbs lost. Just 1lb away from the elusive 280lbs now - hopefully next week.

My week didn't start great, I had a sinus infection, TOTM, and my sciatica was bad, so I felt sorry for myself and ate lots, but managed to turn it around.

This week I ate all of my weekly points as well as 3 of the 42 activity points I earned. Most of which was done in the first few days! I did have two days near the end where I was under points. I think this worked well for me, and I'm going to attempt to eat all my weekly points again this week, which shouldn't be hard seeing as I just had taco bell for lunch (I know slapped wrist for me) and I'm going out for a curry with friends tonight.

I haven't been swimming for two weeks as I was giving my hair a break before my cut and color. So plan to get back swimming this week and use my new swim gloves I bought.

Had a great NSV this week, I bought some new jeans in a size 20 and
they fit really well, was so chuffed, think that helped the end of the
week go better. I also bought a size 18 as they were on sale, so I have
something to work on.

Here are the before and after shots of my
hair, you cant really see the color in the photo, but it is really nice
(well I think so anyway!) Went with the A line cut so I didn't lose too
much length at the front.

I updated my blog the other day, and you should be able to view my
goals/rewards and photos now via the tabs at the top of the page. Also
if I haven't mentioned you in my Favorite blog tab let me know and I will
add you.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Nearly forgot to do the photo challenge today. I have a photo of Dave and I that was taken in April 2008 near our house in England, and it always makes me smile when I look at it, and makes me miss walks in the snow.

Tomorrow's category is - where you work. Which will be tricky for me as I don't work. So will have to be creative on that one.

Happy Pancake Day - today is also known in different parts of the world as Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday and Shrove Tuesday. Being British I like to call today pancake day.

A little bit of history about today, today is supposed the be the day you eat all the fattening food in your house in preparation for lent which begins tomorrow, when you should then give up something for the next 47 days until Easter, traditionally fattening things like butter and milk (hence the pancakes). This is based on the Christian church, but I know lots of people who aren't religious also give up something for this period. Not me though, I like everything too much!

So back to the important things the pancakes. I have just had my pancakes with sugar and lemon - which I think is the most traditional way to have them (although I could be wrong), but it's what I've had for the last 30+ years. One thing that I did notice this year is how there were a lot of people in the UK who didn't know it was pancake day today - I always remember seeing pancake mix and lemons everywhere leading up to today, but maybe its a dieing tradition - I hope not :(

I halved the recipe and used fat free milk, and 'fake' sugar and I used cooking spray instead of butter in the frying pan. It worked out as 8 weight watchers points, and for that I got 4 decent sized pancakes. They are also super nice with nutella or strawberries and bananas.

Make sure the pan is nice and hot, and just pour in a small amount of batter to cover the bottom of the pan. Cook for approx 2 mins on each side until it starts to go golden brown and makes that pretty pancake pattern!

I like to sprinkle sugar and lemon on the plate as well as on top of the pancake.

Roll the pancake and enjoy.

Apologies to all my American friends but I have to say English pancakes are so much yummier than American pancakes, although American pancakes are good in small doses.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

As I took this photo, I imagined lots of other people taking the same photo for the photo challenge today :) I do own a dishwasher but these are the items I wash by hand. My kitchen is now lovely and tidy again - until the husband cooks later that is!!

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Today I sampled the 'Shamrock Shake' from Mcdonalds, which is their St Paddy's day special. It's green (obviously) and vanilla with a hint of mint. It wasn't that great - too sweet. Plus I had a small one and it was 11 ww points, luckily I only drank about 1/4 of it.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Each week I post my loss (or gain), but I never mention my actual weight, and after viewing a variety of blogs from other people on big weight loss journeys, I thought to myself 'why don't I disclose my weight?' I guess it's because I'm embarrassed about how heavy I am, although I clearly look very overweight so it's not as if I'm hiding the fact.

So today I have decided I will start posting my weekly updates with my weight as this may also encourage me to try harder (i can but hope). I have also decided to set myself some mini goals and rewards too.

So this week I lost 1.8lbs taking me to a total loss of 9.6lbs in 5 weeks. Which I think is good, but it should be a lot more, weighing in at over 280lbs I should be losing a lot more each week. This week I earned 38 activity points, I am counting my water running as water aerobics which is 8 points for 60 minutes, it says 20 points for an hour of water running, but I'm not convinced I earn that many! So as you can see this week I was under on points two days, and over on three days and used half of my activity points and none of my weekly points. Do you think maybe I'm not eating enough? I think this week I am going to aim to eat my weekly points but not my activity points and see if that makes any difference.

I havent been to water aerobics since Saturday as my hair was getting really dry and knotted, so Ive taken a break as I have a hair appointment tomorrow and am planning on getting it colored so wanted it to be non chloriney for that. I hope to go back to water aerobics from next Tuesday, so that gives my hair a break after the coloring too, need to think about possibly buying a swim cap to help keep the color - will have to check with the hairdresser and see what she recommends. I did buy some special swim shampoo and conditioner for colored hair but haven't tried it yet.

I said I was going to publish my weight, so here goes. Today's weight was 282.6lbs. I went back through some records on my PC and my highest recorded weight was in January 2011 when I weighed in at 305.8lbs, so its heading in the right direction now. I've also found some old weight watchers cards from many a year ago which I plan on scanning and sharing with you next week.

Goals and rewards:

My first goal I have been trying to reach for a while is to get to 280lbs (2.6lbs to go), not sure if its just me, but 280lbs doesn't sound as horrifying as 20 stone does!

My reward for reaching this weight will be to go for a pedicure.

My 5% goal (since starting ww online on Jan 11) is 277.6lbs so this will be my second goal, not sure of a reward for that yet. I think one of my problems is I always reward myself with food related things, so need to retrain that part of my brain. Feel free to suggest rewards for me. I need to update my blog at some point so will find somewhere to post these goals and rewards. I think I will then set mini 10lb goals, so 270, 260, 250 etc, plus inbetween 10%, 15% as mini mini goals.

If you have made it to this part of my post - Congratulations, and hope I haven't bored you too much. Thanks for reading and sharing my journey with me.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Something you would have needed if you were in San Francisco this morning, as it was raining lots! I had planned on taking a picture of the gorgeous blue skies, but the rain arrived instead, so I found these in Target.

Tomorrow's category is 'heart', which is ideal for Valentine's Day.

Here is the list for those of you who might still want to take part in the February challenge

So I went shopping in Target this morning, is it just me, or is it impossible to shop there and come away spending less than $100? Plus I only went there for two things, but once I was there I thought of other things I needed!!

The first thing I found was the new Skinny Cow bars. Of course I had to try one of each!! The wafer ones are 3 ww points, and the cluster ones are 4 ww points. The wafer one was my favorite and tasted a bit like a kit kat, and the cluster one tasted a bit like a toffee crisp - my British friends will know what I mean by that :) They were both $3.99 and you get 6 bars of the crisp one and 6 pouches of the clusters.

I also finally got round to buying my Christmas present from my best friend who sent me a Target gift card, and I bought Just Dance 3 for the Wii. I've already got the first two but must confess I haven't played either for a long while. I'm excited about this one as it has two of my favorite songs on 'Video Killed the Radio Star' by The Buggles and 'Take on Me' by A-ha. I find I can dance in time much better if I know the song, and I don't listen to a lot of recent music, so anything with 80's music on is a plus. I plan on having a dance and a sing later on and earning some activity points.

I also picked up some Dove milk chocolate hearts, and tried one - they taste just like galaxy chocolate from England!! So I will have to make sure I don't make a habit of buying and eating them.

I recently received a refund from KGB deals, and only have a small amount of time to use the money. There is nothing I currently want to buy but they do have a current deal which is a years subscription to Weight Watchers magazine for $5, and I have $15 in my account to use.

So I have just purchased 3 subscriptions and would like to give them to 3 of you lovely people :) I already have a 2 year subscription so its no good to me.

Alternatively here is the link to buy a subscription for $5 for yourself

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Today has been a really nice sunny day in San Francisco, and I thought about taking a picture of the sun shining, but then decided to go with my back up plan, which I decided on yesterday in case it wasn't sunny today.

So I present to you my first tattoo that I got back in 1994 (apologies for the slightly blurry photo)

Tomorrow's category is 'front door' - which sounds like an easy one :)

Week four weigh in today and a gain of 1.4lbs this week, taking my total loss to 7.8lbs.

Last week I thought I wasn't eating enough as I was exercising loads, so I went into this week with the wrong frame of mind, and made the mistake of not tracking and guessing point values, and as the week progressed I just carried on eating. I do tend to get into the habit of having a few good weeks, then blowing it for a week, so need to work on breaking that habit.

Anyway today is the start of a fresh week, I started today by going to my water running class, I am really enjoying these classes and always leave the pool feeling really refreshed. Ive just had a very yummy lunch of egg taco muffins and spinach salad, courtesy of Danica's Blog, which were really really yummy.

I am going out tonight with a friend to play pool and we are going to Heidi's pies for dinner. I have 26 points left for today, so plan on having a salad and then a slice of pie. So my 26 points should cover me. I have two trips to the movies planned this week, going to see Big Miracle (I'm a huge Drew Barrymore fan) and Woman in Black and have decided to take a bottle of water with me and save some money and points by not having popcorn.

I've been going through my pile of magazines and have four weight watchers magazines I havent yet read, so plan to go through those to get some recipe ideas.

I also wanted to thank all of my new ww buddies on twitter - you all know who you are :) You have shared some great recipes and ideas, and I have no excuse for not trying new things. Talking of new things, I finally found spaghetti squash in the store, so plan to make a dish with that this week. So I have no excuses not to have a great week and a great loss next Wednesday.

Nearly forgot to mention my fundraising efforts!

I have now raised $625 towards my $2300 goal, thank you to everyone who has donated and plans to donate. Here is the link if anyone else would like to donate.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

I thought about this all day, and don't have many clothes with buttons on it seems :( I even looked in the store for buttons, and was even tempted to drive to World Market and look for Cadburys Buttons, but alas I didn't. So instead I decided to take a photo of a button that is on something I use almost everyday. So it's kind of a mini competition, as you need to guess what the button is on - there is no prize, except the glory of guessing the right answer. So here is today's photo.

Tomorrow's category is 'sun' So let's hope it is a sunny day tomorrow, if not I have a back up plan in mind already :)